Ember McMasters
by HaraBarbie
Summary: Ember finds herself attracted to Vlad upon seeing him, but the feeling is not mutual. However, when Vlad sees her powers, he realizes he can use her to his advantage when it comes to his conquest of Danny. Story is also Danny/Vlad. Please read and review.


"Who is he?" the blue-haired girl gasped softly; her brilliant green eyes briefly dilated. One of her soft hands grasped her gloved arm, the painted nails digging sharply into the flesh. A booted foot scraped nervously at the ground beneath her, creating a small, sharp circle in the dust of the rock on which they stood.

The woman beside her, dressed sharply in a cleanly-pressed red skirt and blouse, laughed softly at her in amusement, for she knew that look all two well, being older and far wiser than this freakishly dressed, attention-craving woman who'd somehow managed to come into her life and find a place, if vague, in her heart—if she had one, that was. Spectra, a ghost who professed therapy but left the hearts of her patients aching more loudly than ever before, could see the light of love dance in Ms. McLain's eyes, rapidly and with uncompromised excitement, as she stared at the man who was perhaps as freakishly looking as her, if not more so. It was the kind of thing Spectra saw at least once a day when she conducted sessions; some oh-so-neglected teenager would get to talking about their lover, one who may or may not be causing them turmoil, but something would catch in their eyes all the same. It never ceased to amuse her, at least.

"Ember," she purred, putting a delicate hand on the girl's uncovered shoulder. "Don't you think he's just a tad old for you?"

"What makes you say that?" Ember McLain said, but her voice held a dreamy quality, and it became apparent that she was not, by any means, concerned as to the man's age. In fact, she had seemed, upon that moment of first laying her eyes upon him, to lose sight of everything else, and she would not spare Spectra, or the other girl with whom the two had come to ménage, a glance.

"He's my age," Spectra said, smiling amusedly until Kitty—her thing, because all ghosts have one, of course, being that you wouldn't catch her fifty feet from a diner or biker bar or riding anything other than a rusty motorcycle—laughed scornfully.

"Finally come to accept your old age?" she teased, dragging a dainty finger against the smooth, wrinkle-free surface of her own cheek with closed eyes, a soft, seemingly innocent smile tugging at the corners of her lips which she had caked with several layers of a bright red lipstick.

A growl escaping her lips, Spectra disregarded Ember and turned to Kitty, who'd kicked out a leg saucily and was flexing it not-so-subtly in a way that made the two ghosts passing pause to huddle together and whisper profanities as to what they'd like to do to her in their bedrooms when night—or whatever came at six o'clock in the Ghost Zone—fell. Spectra took a defensive stance, her long legs spreading and elbows bending, the fists clenched and glowing with green ectoplasm, as she prepared to fight and defend what was so sensitive to her.

If the youth of women had had a poster-child, it would have been Kitty, for her eyes were bright, her skin flawless, and for her body, perky breasts and thick ass, men would have killed, and they had; Spectra, on the other hand, while not gorgeous—a woman you'd lose sleep over, like Kitty—was simply _alright_. She was, in reality, someone who looks well for their age but has really no right to parade around in short skirts or flaunt extravagant eyelashes, and because Spectra craved beauty like no other, one can imagine the tension that'd grown between the two ghosts—and continued to increase steadily, as Kitty did not have a bone of modesty in her body, and took pleasure in watching Spectra squirm.

When these little cat fights—literally, of course—broke out, Ms. McLain took it upon herself to calm both women and direct their attention elsewhere; Ember was not the type of girl who might feel the need to join in, because her beauty was not number one when it came to being noticed—lord knew, however, that if someone had challenged her to a sing-off, she might have scalped a small child with one of Spectra's razor blades—and kept them quiet so that she might find solace in which she could write music—real music, the kind that would not hypnotize her audience but would sound fantastic anyway. Now, however, music was the last thing on her mind, and she would not intervene to silence the arguing which would swiftly become a physical matter. Instead, she watched the man as he read pages of a small journal titled, simply, "Danny" in messy handwriting.

The man was focused intently on whatever content lie behind the wall of cheap leather, one gloved hand gripping the book lightly. The other rested on his chin, stroking the neatly-shaped forest of black hair that resided there. His red, pupil-less and iris-less eyes were affixed to the pages, but his eyebrows were raised in a questioning matter, and his mouth was pressed firmly together in similar confusion. A strong wind blew in this frosty area of the Ghost Zone, but the man's silver cape was tucked behind him where he sat against an ice-enveloped rock, and it did not billow behind him; the icy fingers of the wind tousled his spiked black hair, however, and it shifted and danced in a way that made Ember's mouth fall open and her eyes cloud dreamily. When another wind blew, seemingly chilling him, he removed his hand from his chin and took a long drag on the cigarette he'd clumsily clutched alongside the journal. When he opened his mouth to do this, one of his fangs glinted in the low light that was present.

As Spectra and Kitty's argument became a rather violent brawl, the man's attention was drawn away from the manuscript and he looked up. The confusion that had been there—the need to understand—left swiftly and shifted into unmistakable irritation and something that might have been as strong as detestation.

The vampire set down the journal and spoke sternly the first words Ember McLain would hear from the man she'd so blindly fallen in love with—and they were not, by any means, lines out of Romeo and Juliet.

"Would you bitches be quiet?"


End file.
